In conformity with the Executive order directing the organization of a board, to be composed of one person to be named by the head of each of the Executive Departments which may have articles and materials to be exhibited at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exhibition, I hereby direct the persons who have been so designated, viz, Major and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen C. Lyford, United States Army, of the War Department, president of the board; Charles S. Hill, of the Department of State; Lieutenant B.H.  Buckingham, United States Navy, of the Navy Department; William F. McLennan, of the Treasury Department; Abraham D. Hazen, Assistant Postmaster-General; Benjamin Butterworth, of the Interior Department; Cecil Clay, of the Department of Justice; William Saunders, of the Agricultural Department; G. Brown Goode, of the Smithsonian Institution; London A. Smith, of the Bureau of Education, Interior Department, to assemble at the Department of State, in the city of Washington, at noon on the 17th day of May, 1884, and then and there to organize said board; and said board when so organized shall immediately proceed to the discharge of its duties.

I also designate W.A.  De Caindry as the secretary of said board.

Done at the city of Washington, this 13th day of May, 1884, and of the
Independence of the United States the one hundred and eighth.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR.

By the President: 
  FREDK.  T. FRELINGHUYSEN,
    Secretary of State.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, May 26, 1884.

Under the provisions of section 4 of the act approved March 3, 1883, it is hereby ordered that the several Executive Departments, the Department of Agriculture, and the Government Printing Office be closed on Friday, the 30th instant, to enable the employees to participate in the decoration of the graves of the soldiers who fell during the rebellion.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR.

In the exercise of the power vested in the President by the Constitution, and by virtue of the seventeen hundred and fifty-third section of the Revised Statutes and of the civil-service act approved January 16, 1883, the following special rule for the regulation and improvement of the executive civil service is hereby promulgated: 

SPECIAL RULE.

Any person who was employed on or before the 16th day of January, 1883, in any Executive Department at Washington in a position not included in the classified service in said Department, but who was at that date exclusively engaged in the duties of a clerk or copyist, and who has since been continuously so engaged, may, in the discretion of the head of the Department, be treated as within the classified service in the Department in a grade corresponding to such duties, provided such person has either already passed an examination under the civil-service rules or shall pass an appropriate competitive or noncompetitive examination thereunder at a grade of 65 per cent or upward.

Approved, June 12, 1884.